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My family and I attended Edison Family Day yesterday in Edison, NJ. This event was held in a large convention center with about 100 vendors in attendance. The vendors included everything from party planners to restaurants and health care centers. While it was meant to be a fun day for our local families, it was more of a large marketing event with everyone handing out coupons, prizes and business cards. While I was walking around with my family, however, I noticed there wasn’t a single insurance company represented at the event. So, of course, it got me thinking…

Since this event is held every year (and maybe there are events like this in neighboring towns), I’m thinking of renting a table to promote myself, NJ’s Business Insurance Lady. While I’m not a restaurant giving away a food sample or a bowling alley giving away free games, I’m sure I can come up with some way to get business owners to frequent my table. Even if they are just the business owners of the other businesses attending the same event, it would certainly be worth it. Here are some ideas for getting said business owners to come to the table to chat:

Raffle off a basket of something like gourmet coffees and hot chocolate with a fun mug or two.

Raffle off a gift certificate for a professional photography session for the person’s business. (Maybe I can get a photography business to donate this since it will be promoting their business as well.)

Raffle off a gift certificate for marketing materials and use that to promote my printing business as well (Your Life In Print).

Use a fishbowl to collect business cards for those who wish to be in the raffle (instant leads!).

Of course, the goal would be to make the table fun, engaging and useful for business owners. I’d also include posters or poster boards with tips on insuring a business properly or questions to ask an insurance agent before switching over to a new agent. And, at the event, everyone walks around with plastic bags they look to fill with anything they can so I’d probably put out pens or frisbees or something with my name and logo on them.

Your turn: Have you ever set up a table at an event like this? If so, any tips for those who’d like to try this type of marketing?

I remember spending countless hours in college listening to experts give their spiel on how to be as successful as them. And, I even remember the names of a few of the more memorable ones and, if I look deep enough, I still have a few of their business cards.

Since we are all looking to be considered an expert in commercial insurance, I thought why not offer to become a guest professor at our local university? If you have the ability to create a single lesson on insuring an array of businesses and the ins and outs of worker’s compensation, then why not share the knowledge and create a new generation of clients for yourself? Of course, you’d want to focus on business classes since most business majors are either looking to start their own business eventually or work for a large business; both of which could use your services.

Obviously, this isn’t one of those marketing techniques that will allow you to walk out of there with a handful of new clients but, if you play your cards right, you could walk out of there with a list of leads to call after they graduate. Just provide a ‘sign-in’ form requesting name and email address. You could also offer to email them an article or two extending the lesson to outside the classroom and giving them a reason to remain in contact with you. You could even suggest they follow your blog.

While you’ll want to make sure you demonstrate your business savvy ways, you’ll also want the students to walk out of there feeling like they could contact you with any questions, concerns or for information regarding an upcoming paper. The more comfortable they feel contacting you, they more likely it will be that they will contact you for your services in the future.

Every Tuesday I create a post on our agency’s facebook page giving small business owners the opportunity to talk about their business. Since my niche is business insurance I figured the benefits from doing this is threefold:

First, it shows I care about our fans and their businesses. Some of our fans are clients and some are not but they are all given the opportunity to network to each other and possibly make new contacts for their business.

Second, it creates super fans. If you’ve researched using facebook to build clientele, you’ve undoubtedly heard of super fans. But, for those of you who haven’t, super fans are those fans who not only use your services but recommend you to others and will remain fans of your page for life. We have several fans who have recommended our page to others based on the ability to network to our other fans and have expressed their appreciation for the ability to network through our page.

Third, it generates warm leads. No, I don’t go out and solicit to those who utilize every Tuesday’s post; that would be too tacky for my taste and a turnoff, I believe. But, it does allow other small businesses (who I haven’t brought on as clients yet) the opportunity to check out our page, what we are all about and, ultimately, give us a call or visit our website. I have had a few calls for quotes using this method.

We see it all the time, major companies joining forces to create and launch a new product line so I thought, why not take that idea and use it to our benefit? So, instead of completely merging with another company, why not use the services of another small business to help market to the type of business you are looking to get in front of?

If you think about it, all businesses are looking to market to a certain type of customer and all businesses need to market themselves to get those customers in the door. Why not join forces with a business who is also doing business to business marketing in the same niche you are currently marketing to?

For example, if you are targeting auto repair shops, why not create a postcard or flier featuring your insurance business and a local auto parts business? Both businesses want to get in front of auto repair business owners so it only makes sense to work together and share the costs of the mailing.

Or, if you are targeting those in need of wedding day insurance, why not co-market with a florist or photographer?

The idea is to think about what other businesses are also targeting the same type of business you are and work with them to market together.

Once you find another business to co-market with, however, make sure you work out a contract with them stating which type of marketing you will be doing together (postcards, fliers, special event) and that the both of you will share the costs of said marketing.

Your turn: Have you done something similar in the past? What did you do and how did it work out? We’d love to learn from your expertise in this area.

If you have any ideas or requests for future posts, please feel free to email me at melissa@njbusinessinsurancelady.com